Almost got the ASF demuxer going in gstreamer now. I guess there's probably just a couple of hours of debugging and tidying left to do. Disappointing not to complete it today though as I'm flying to England until Sunday and won't be able do any work on it there because...

My laptop broke last week. It was an old but trusty (read heavy) Dell Latitude something-or-the-other (around PII 450 I think). All three keyboard lights come one when you push the power button for about three seconds and then they all go off again. Having tried the usual tricks from the simple(disconnecting the power and battery to let it discharge and then charging it again) to the scientific (beating it with my fist) I decided the only other option was to dismantle the whole thing.

I don't know what I expected to find, perhaps a plug hanging out or a piece of soggy dental floss stuck to the CPU but alas nothing. After reconstructing the whole thing (except for two mysterious moulded plastic pieces which don't seem to fit back in any way, oh, and of course, some screws) still the same three second lights.